Frugal Living

When I first heard about using soap nuts as a laundry detergent alternative, I liked the idea of using something that was natural and simple . . . but I was also pretty skeptical that they would actually work.

When I tried them, though, I was pleasantly surprised by how well they cleaned my clothes. They worked just as well as any homemade or store bought natural laundry detergents I had tried, only they’re even easier to use and much cheaper too.

Sometimes it seems like there’s the misconception that you have to spend a lot of money in order to improve your health. Especially in the world of natural health, it can sometimes seem as though you can’t be truly healthy unless you’re willing to spend a fortune on vitamin and mineral supplements covering every letter of the alphabet or special tools like dehydrators and water purifiers and Vitamix blenders.

These things can all be very helpful, of course, and there are times when trying to live a healthier lifestyle may mean shifting your priorities around a bit to allow you to spend the extra money to buy organic food or natural products, or it might mean waiting a while until you can save up enough money. But if you have a tight budget and you don’t have the money to buy all of the fancy natural products and ingredients you hear about on the web, that doesn’t mean you can’t still do things to improve your health!

It took a long while before I finally decided to get my own grain grinder. For several months, I had debated whether it would be worth the cost and the effort, but I finally decided to just go ahead and give it a try.

Grinding your own grain is getting more popular, at least among the natural real food crowd anyways, but the question is, is it really healthier to grind your own grain? I wondered that at first but after doing some reading and some thinking there were two main reasons that finally convinced me to get a grain grinder: the freshness of the flour and the cost savings.

One of my least favorite cleaning chores has always been washing windows and mirrors.

Conventional glass-cleaning products are usually filled with chemicals, and they usually smell pretty nasty too.

And even natural cleaners often don’t work as well, leaving streaks on the glass – which seems to happen a lot even with those products that claim to be “streak-free.” And then there’s the problem of the little bits of lint left by the paper towels that make the glass look just as dusty as if it had never been cleaned in the first place.

For a long time, I had been confused about the subject of yeast. The only yeast I knew about was the little packet of active dry yeast or rapid rise yeast that I would sprinkle into my dough. But then I started collecting 19th century cookbooks and found recipes that called for “one gill of fresh yeast” among the other ingredients.

Once I finally figured out what a gill was, though, (about a half a cup,) I was even more confused. I would have to use how many little instant yeast packets to equal a whole half a cup?!

After doing some more research on period cooking, though, I found several recipes for how to make homemade yeast that helped to solve the mystery a bit. Most involve the use of hops or potatoes added to boiling water and flour. The problem with all of those recipes, though, is that they all call for adding “a bit of good fresh yeast” to the mixture – which was exactly what I didn’t have!

In my last post, I talked about all of the great benefits that come from going outside and taking a walk in the fresh air. Taking an outdoor walk every day is a great thing to do, but… it’s usually only a half hour or maybe an hour of the day, and the rest of the time you’re breathing stale, indoor air.

So, the question is, how do you improve the quality of the air inside your home (without paying for any sort of expensive filters or air purifying systems)? The good news is that there are a couple of cheap or even free old-fashioned ways to purify indoor air and improve the quality of the air you breathe.